


What’s Love?

by SummerStormFlower



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Asexual Dewey Duck, Asexuality, Brothers, F/M, Falling In Love, Falling Out of Love, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gosalyn makes a tiny but important appearance at the end, Growing Up, Hugs, Lesbians, Protective brothers, Self-Esteem Issues, Trans Character, Trans Louie Duck, Webby and Lena are lesbians, break ups, talks about sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27076633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerStormFlower/pseuds/SummerStormFlower
Summary: Dewey grows up, falls in love, but he thinks something’s missing. He spends a lot of time searching, only to find that nothing was missing in the first place.
Relationships: Dewey Duck & Donald Duck, Dewey Duck & Huey Duck & Louie Duck, Dewey Duck/Webby Vanderquack, Donald Duck & Louie Duck
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36





	What’s Love?

**Author's Note:**

> It snowed today! It was so pretty! And I got rejected today! So I’m a little sad! :D

Dewey was raised by his Uncle Donald, the brother of his absentee mother and a single man. So, the concept of parents. . . was a little confusing to him. Dewey knew most kids had parents. Usually a mom and a dad. And sometimes, he’d see grown-ups kiss each other. Uncle Donald told him that kissing is something you do when you’re in love with someone. 

Dewey didn’t know what that meant. 

Uncle Donald didn’t really know how to explain it. It wasn’t a typical kind of love, he tried telling Dewey. It wasn’t the kind of love Dewey felt for his siblings. It was a different, deeper kind of love. 

Dewey was confused. He didn’t know what kind of love Uncle Donald meant. 

Uncle Donald said he’d understand it when he was older. 

Dewey got a little older. Then puberty smacked him like a bulldozer. Pimples, voice cracks, growing pains, emotional rollercoasters. It was awful. But Dewey learned to live with it, as one does when there’s no other choice in the matter. 

However, something was missing. Something that all the other kids had, but Dewey didn’t. Dewey just didn’t understand what it was. 

“Isn’t she hot?”

Dewey heard the boys say that about the girls a lot. He just wasn’t sure why. It made no sense to him. Especially in the winter when it snowed everyday and everybody was clearly very cold, not hot. Dewey didn’t get it. 

Then one day, a boy called Luann ‘hot’. Luann got mad. Huey got even madder. And Dewey couldn’t figure out why for the life of him. 

“Don’t say that!” 

“Luann is hot! Hot, hot, hot!”

“Stop it!”

Luann was. . . different. She hated being called Luann, hated skirts, and hated her hair long. Dewey didn’t know why. He wasn’t even sure if Luann knew why. 

Huey had that angry look on his face. That angry look he got when he was about to explode. 

He pushed the boy away from Luann. “Leave her alone!”

Dewey saw Luann flinch. Although he didn’t know what was going on, he knew that it was hurting Luann. So he stood in front of her protectively, trying to shield his baby sister from the world that treated her so cruelly just because she was a little different. 

The boy tried to push Huey back, but Huey pushed back harder. “Leave. Her. Alone!” he reiterated, tone dangerous. 

The boy finally gave up and left. 

“Thanks, Hugh,” Luann said, rubbing her arm self-consciously. 

Huey nodded. 

“Why was he saying that?” Dewey asked his big brother, his mind hazy with confusion. “What does it mean?”

Huey frowned in thought. “It means. . . uh, it’s kind of hard to explain.”

So, Dewey was confused. Confused about what ‘hot’ meant. And confused about why Luann always flinched when they called her ‘her’.  
______________________________________

Dewey fell in love at fifteen. He couldn’t explain how. Just that he did. And now he understood what the stars in people’s eyes meant when they talked about love and romance. 

Webby had a heart full of compassion and a personality that shined as bright as the sun. She was suddenly the centre of Dewey’s world. When he was with her, Dewey felt like his heart was smiling. 

Finally, Dewey felt like he wasn’t missing something that everyone else had. . . for awhile.  
______________________________________

They figured out what was wrong with Luann. When Uncle Donald found her crying in her room in just her bra, he took her to a therapist. She was diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Well, there wasn’t something wrong with Luann. Saying it like that wasn’t right. There was nothing wrong with Luann. She wasn’t broken.

Her brain was just wired a little differently.

They had a long, important talk in the living room.

It was a little hard to understand. Dewey didn’t really get the medical part of it. But he got that Luann wasn’t a girl.

Uncle Scrooge stared long and hard at Luann. Then he turned to Donald and nodded, like he was confirming something. “That explains a lot,” he said.

Uncle Donald sighed guiltily, burying his face in his hands. “I suspected it,” he confessed. “Luann seemed to be showing signs when she—“

Luann flinched.

Uncle Donald looked at her. “When he was three.”

Luann blinked. Then relaxed, years of pain rolling right off his shoulders. Dewey had never seen his face like that before—lifelike. For as long as Dewey could remember, Luann’s face had always looked exhausted. Like merely existing took too much energy. 

That look is gone now, slipped right off of Luann’s face.

“But I wasn’t sure,” Uncle Donald continued, crumpling like a weight was pressing down on him. “And money was so tight, I couldn’t take him to a therapist. And I didn’t want to do or say anything that might confuse Luann, in case it turned out I was wrong. But me not doing anything at all caused him to hurt for so long.”

Luann shook his head vehemently. “No, no, Uncle Donald, it wasn’t your fault!” he exclaimed.

Uncle Donald’s eyes were teary. He rubbed at them, sniffling. The kids had never seen him cry before. “I should’ve talked to you about it,” his voice shook.

Luann’s own eyes filled with tears. Without regard for his size, he jumped on Uncle Donald’s lap and hugged him. “I don’t blame you!” he sobbed, nuzzling awkwardly against Donald’s chest. “I should’ve told you a long time ago! I was just-just scared—“

Donald held Luann tightly against him. “Honey, you never have to be scared to tell me anything,” he whispered. “There’s nothing you could ever tell me that would make me stop loving you.”

Luann burst out crying so violently, Dewey felt it shake his core.

Huey, trying to keep his tears at bay at the scene, went to sit on the armrest and joined the hug. They were too big for this stuff, but damn it. Dewey climbed onto the other armrest and joined the hug too.

The whole family stayed like that, holding each other awkwardly, until Luann had calmed down. He sniffed, scrubbing the wetness off his face. His eyes were still red, but he looked better. 

Huey wrapped an arm around him. Luann leaned into him. “Do you want to sleep in our room?” he asked.

Luann thought for a moment, then nodded. 

“And do ye want ter cut that mop on yer head?” asked Uncle Scrooge.

Luann nodded.

“And do you want to change your name?” Uncle Donald asked.

Luann nodded.

Uncle Donald smiled warmly. “Did you have something in mind?”

Luann hesitated. Then he swallowed bravely and answered, “Louie.”

So Luann became Louie. And Louie was different than Luann. Louie was happy.  
______________________________________

Dewey fell in love at fifteen. He also got his heart broken at fifteen. 

Webby sat him down on her bed in her room, a sad look on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. She looked so, so guilty, which Dewey hated to see on her. 

Of course, Webby’s sincerity didn’t make Dewey’s heartbreak ache any less. 

Webby was a lesbian. She had tried to love Dewey the way that a woman should, but she couldn’t. She cared about him as a friend, so she thought she could make it work between them.

Bet then she fell in love with someone else. 

Dewey didn’t particularly care about his girlfriend being a lesbian. It wasn’t her fault. What hurt was that she wasn’t in love with him. What hurt was that her heart had Lena’s name on it and not Dewey’s. That hurt like a bugger. (Oh great. Uncle Scrooge’s Scottish genes in him were coming out)

“Can we still be friends?” Webby asked.

Dewey looked at her and her sad face. They’d known each other ever since they were little. They had made countless memories together. 

“I’ll need some time,” Dewey told her. Then he smiled. “But of course, we can still be friends.”

Webby’s sigh of relief was huge. “Thank goodness.”

“Hey,” Dewey said reassuringly, holding up a fist. “You and me are friends forever.”

Webby smiled and bumped her first softly against his.

It hurt, sure. But Dewey knew he’d fall in love again someday.  
______________________________________

Sex.

Dewey heard that word in the boys’ locker room. He knew what sex was, obviously. He just. . . didn’t know people actually did it. 

Well, obviously he knew that people did it because of babies. But beyond that reason... Dewey had no idea why someone would want to do it. 

Huey tried to explain it to him once. Apparently, sex was supposed to be pleasurable. Like masturbating. Dewey didn’t masturbate. It didn’t feel pleasurable to him. 

Still confused, he asked Uncle Donald about it. Uncle Donald told him that sex was a gift for two people in love. It was an act of intimacy, a romantic gesture, a declaration of love.

Dewey had loved Webby, but he hadn’t wanted to have sex with her. 

Uncle Donald said he didn’t feel that way because he was young. That he’d understand when he was older. 

Yet all around Dewey, young people felt that way. 

And Dewey did get a little older. He still didn’t understand.  
______________________________________

Dewey had a few girlfriends. He had a couple boyfriends too, but he discovered that he preferred girls. His dating life didn’t flourish well.

He did what Uncle Donald taught him; be a gentleman. A lot of girls—and guys—liked that about him. He’d been told that he also had an attractive face, which seemed to help him.

Dewey was more interested in qualities than appearances. Honestly, he didn’t really understand what made someone beautiful or handsome. Uncle Donald always said that personality mattered the most anyway. So Dewey never looked for appearance in anyone. And he didn’t think much of it. 

Two of Dewey’s girlfriends asked him to have sex with them. He had no idea why. And if he was being truthful, he thought both of them had to be drunk. He wasn’t sure how since neither of them had been drinking, but he couldn’t think of any other reason.

Dewey said no. Like any normal person would have.

Amy spent an hour yelling at him, stormed out the door in a huff, and then they broke up two days later. Lilly’s reaction was similar. She yelled at him too. Then she declared they were done and kicked him out of her house. 

Rumours were a powerful thing and girls talked like unreal. Pretty soon, everyone in school knew that Dewey didn’t “dewey” sex. And his dating life plummeted. Leaving him miserably single.

There was no day Dewey hated more than Valentines’ Day.  
______________________________________

Life. . . is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. 

Now that Dewey was miserably single seemingly for the rest of his life, he had a lot of time to just think. Mostly about random quotes. Dewey sighed. 

What was the big deal about sex anyway? And why was being a virgin such a bad thing? Why did teenagers want it so bad? There were so many consequences nobody thought about. Disease, unplanned pregnancy. What if that person only wants you for your body? What if you break up down the road? Those could be awful consequences. And if you did get some kind of disease, it disrupted your life and your health. Not to mention, you were treated like less of a person. And if a girl did get pregnant, she was suddenly a slut. 

Dewey had seen those things happen in his own high school. It made him wonder why those people even did it in the first place. He had seen their lives get destroyed by bullying, sickness, and a thousand other things because of it. 

Ruin your life for sex?

It made Dewey wonder if it was worth it.  
______________________________________

Louie often called Dewey a ‘hopeless romantic’. Because whenever he had a new crush, he’d write poems, giggle for absolutely no reason, and wear a giant dreamy grin on his face all day. Dewey loved it when his heart glowed and fuzzy, warm feelings swelled up inside him. He loved the butterflies dancing in his stomach. It was one of the best feelings ever. He dreamed about thousands of ways to fall in love. He dreamed of finding the love of his life each night. 

But. . . that changed. 

He stopped dreaming. There was no point. Nobody wanted him. 

All anybody ever wanted from him was sex. And sex was the last thing in the world Dewey wanted.

Maybe. . . maybe there was something wrong with him.  
______________________________________

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Louie snapped, giving him a stern frown.

Dewey curled in on himself. They were doing homework on Louie’s bed. 

“Then why doesn’t anyone love me?” he asked sadly. 

“People do love you, Dewey.”

“Not like that. Like... romantically.”

Louie sighed, leaning back and crossing his arms. “Cuz they’re jerks,” he said simply.

Dewey looked down. “Am I. . . unloveable?”

“No,” Louie said immediately, “You’re probably just asexual.”

That caught Dewey’s attention. He looked up at Louie. “What? What’s that mean?” he asked curiously.

Louie hummed, contemplating how to explain. “Basically, it means. . . you don’t want or like sex.”

Dewey blinked. “Really?”

“Well, everybody’s different. But. . . like. . . you don’t have the same feelings toward sex, like most people.”

Dewey was speechless for a moment. 

He swallowed then. “That sounds exactly like me.”

Louie nodded.

“So,” Dewey hesitated, “there’s nothing wrong with me?”

Louie gave him a very serious gaze. “Nothing,” he said. “You are perfectly and wonderfully yourself.”

Dewey blinked rapidly, throat constricting and his chest flooding with emotion. He sniffed and rubbed at his eyes. He was smiling. 

He had a name for his feelings. There were other people like him. There was nothing wrong with him.  
______________________________________

Explaining what an ‘ace ring’ was to Uncle Donald was a surprisingly easy conversation. Uncle Donald just nodded, as if he understood. When Dewey told him what asexual meant and that he was, Uncle Donald looked like he was thinking for a moment. Then he nodded his head again. 

“It sounds like you. If it feels like you, it must be you,” was what he said. 

So Uncle Donald bought him a black band. And Dewey wore it on his middle finger on his right hand. It might’ve just been an accessory, but it filled an empty spot inside Dewey’s heart.

Not everyone at school knew what it meant. But those who did were suddenly more understanding. Dewey even got an apology from one of his ex-girlfriends. 

It. . . didn’t feel right. 

Sure, it was nice not to be faced with hostility every direction he turned. But he didn’t think that him being asexual should’ve changed the way people treated him. It didn’t change the way Uncle Donald, or Uncle Scrooge, or Huey, or Louie, or Webby treated him. 

But, Dewey supposed, only those who truly cared about him really mattered.

Rumours spread like crazy and girls talked like unreal. Pretty soon, the whole school knew why Dewey didn’t “dewey” sex. Some people were cruel about it. Some pitied him about it. Some merely said, ‘So what? You’re still Dewey. This changes nothing’.

Dewey’s family fell under the third one.  
______________________________________

And life was pretty good.  
______________________________________

Love.

Dewey once thought he’d never find it. That nobody would ever be willing, or patient enough to accept every part of who he is.

Then, he collided with a girl who had red pigtails. Literally collided with her. They were both running down the sidewalk and crashed right into each other. They both fell on their butts, and then made eye contact.

She had the most beautiful eyes Dewey had ever seen in his life.

And a connection was born.

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully, I portrayed asexuality well here. I tried my best and hopefully caught any mistakes. Please feel free to let me know what you think, and if there’s anything about asexuality in here that should be improved/or needs fixing. Thank you and thank you for reading!!
> 
> Oh, and this was actually my first time writing Louie as trans. And my first time writing it the other way. So that was new. Hope I did alright.
> 
> Have a good day/night!


End file.
